Blues Poems by Kevin Young

Blues Poems by Kevin Young

Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to Sweet Home Chicago, forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology-the first devoted exclusively to blues poems-a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power.

The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes and Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden, to Blues on Yellow by Marilyn Chin and Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics-poems in their own right-from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters.

The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

KEVIN YOUNG is the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. He previously served as the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Young is the author of fourteen books of poetry and prose, including Brown; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, long-listed for the National Book Award; Book of Hours, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Jelly Roll: a blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry; Bunk, a New York Times Notable Book, long-listed for the National Book Award and named on many best of lists for 2017; and The Grey Album, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. The poetry editor of The New Yorker, Young is the editor of nine other volumes, most recently the acclaimed anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375414589
ISBN 10	0375414584
Title	Blues Poems
Author	Kevin Young
Series	Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2003-09-02
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.